‘In dance we trust’: comparing trance-dance parties among secular and Orthodox Israeli youth

Abstract

Israel is arguably a place where music-centred ‘trance-dance’ parties have attained their highest degree of national/cultural prominence, with these events being extremely popular in secular communities and even among Orthodox youth. Based on findings from ethnographic research, the article compares the core features – settings, participants and conduct – of trance parties for secular and Orthodox Israeli youth and examines the functions they perform for each group of partygoers. The findings point to variances in the cultural and personal needs that participation in trance parties fulfils for these disparate communities, which, accordingly, are reflected in their contrastive features. At the same time, both communities of partygoers paradoxically reproduce the very same attitudes and practices their participation intends to challenge, demonstrating that, unlike in other countries, the consumption of psychedelic electronic dance music culture in Israel is essentially devoid of subversive intentions.

Keywords:

• Psychedelic electronic dance music culture (PEDMC)
• secular and Orthodox Israeli youth
• trance-dance parties
• cultural change
• ethnography

Notes

1. Shor, Dancing with Tears, 376.

2. Schmidt, “Full Penetration”; Leon, “Pilgrimage, Political Power and Youth Culture”; Meadan, “TRANCEnation ALIENation”; Ben-Dov, Trance culture in Israel; and Regev, “Trance Music in Israel”.

3. PEDMC is an acronym for the specific culture we are writing about. The acronym EDMC refers to this same cultural construct sans its psychedelic element. Regev and Seroussi, Popular Music and National Culture, 183.

4. Tobin and Schmidt, “Comparing and Contrasting,” 519–539.

5. Schmidt, “(En)Countering the Beat,” 131–150.

6. A recent study on marijuana use among the general Israeli public estimated that roughly one million Israelis have used (illegal) cannabis in the past year, Channel 10 News Magazine, August 24, 2014.

7. LSD-25 stands for ‘lysergic acid diethylamide’ and is a synthetic hallucinogenic compound. MDMA, an abbreviation of ‘methylenedioxymethamphetamine’ is an empathogen known for inducing euphoric mind-states and intimacy with others.

8. See Beck, Risk Society; Hutton, Risky Pleasures; Redmon, “Playful Deviance,” 27–51.

9. See Carmi, TranceMission, 92–94.

10. Hart and Lieberman, Planet Drum, 119–212.

11. Rushkoff, Cyberia, 161–162; See Gerard, “Selecting Ritual,” 1–16; Hutson, “The Rave: Spiritual Healing,” 35–50; Hutson, “Technoshamanism,” 53–77; Malbon, Clubbing; Reynolds, Generation Ecstasy; St John, Technomad; Sylvan, Trance Formation; Takahashi, “The ‘Natural High’,” 145–164; and Takahashi, “Spirituality through the Science,” 239–266.

12. Maffesoli, The Time of the Tribes, 4; See Fornäs and Bolin, Youth Culture in Late Modernity; Hetherington, “Consumption, Tribes and Identity,” 241–250; Sweetman, “Tourist and Travellers?,” 79–93.

13. Turner, The Ritual Process, 97; See Rill, “Rave, Communitas,” 648–661; Schmidt, “Hallucinatory Communitas”; St John, “Trance Tribes and Dance Vibes,” 149–173; Takahashi and Olaveson “Music, Dance, and Raving Bodies,” 72–96; Tramacchi, “Field Tripping,” 201–213; Walsh and Grob, “New Views of Timeless Experiences,” 62–64.

14. Turner, The Ritual Process, 97.

15. Hanna, “Moving Messages,” 192.

16. Ibid., 192; cf. Treitler “Language and the Interpretation,” 32–56; Tobin and Schmidt, “The Language of Paradox,” 97–116.

17. Bennett, Popular Music and Youth, 94.

18. Ram, “The Promised Land,” 225–226.

19. Ibid., 225–226.

20. St John, “The Vibe,” 56–87; See Uriely and Belhassen, “Drugs and Risk-Taking,” 339–359.

21. Cohen, “The Knitted Kipa” 9–30; Ravitzky, Religious and Secular Jews.

22. Gitelman, Religion or Ethnicity; Lieberman and Yadgar, “Israeli Identity,” 163–183; Sheleg, The New Religious Jews.

23. Schachter, “The Development”; Sheleg, The Jewish Renaissance.

24. Goodman, “Contemporary Religious Zionist Youth,” 93–102; Sheleg, The Jewish Renaissance, 56–59.

25. Bartuv, “The Challenge of Being,” 29; cf., Rubin, “Marriage Age in the Texts,” 143–181.

26. Engelberg, “When Loves Spoils Integrity,” 280–291; Gorfein, May it Happen to You Soon; Rotem, “Why, for God’s Sake” (Haaretz, 20 May 2004); Zelzberg and Almog, “Perceptions of Singlehood”.

27. Taub, “The New Dati Leumi Bourgeois,” 5–9; Almog and Paz, “Ideological Currents”.

28. Nahari, “Now I am Between”.

29. Na’aman, “Is Leisure a Factor,” 743–764; see Bar-Lev, “The Impact of Modernity,” 5–11; Nir, “On Hasidism”.

30. Dowty, Critical Issues.

31. Almog, “The Globalization of Israel,” 233–256; Ben-Porat, “Political Economy,” 91–116.

32. Cohen, “Israel as a Post-Zionist,” 210; Ehrlich, “Zionism, Anti Zionism,” 63–97; Hazony, The Jewish State; Kimmerling, The Invention and Decline; Weiss, “War Bodies, Hedonist Bodies,” 813–832.

33. Almog, Goodbye Sroolik; Furstenberg, “Post-Zionism”; Noy and Cohen, “Introduction,” 1–37; Taub, “The Shift in Israeli,” 187–199.

34. Sagiv, “Dionysus in Zion,” 155–178.

35. Shor, Dancing with Tears, 369.

36. Simchai, “Resistance Through Hugging”; Haviv, “Next Year in Kathmandu,” 45–86; Ruah-Midbar and Zaidman, “Everything Starts Within,” 421–436; Ruah-Midbar and Klin-Oron, “Jew Age: Jewish Praxis,” 33–63; Tavory, Dancing in a Thorn Field.

37. Herzog and Lahad, Knowledge and Silence.

38. St John, Technomad, 93–190.

39. Ibid., 93–190.